Insta-hoglets

Thursday is a busy day for me at the Daily Grail, so here are some brief links to interesting stories to keep you happy.

A Pentagon investigation into the interrogation of prisoners detained in the war on terror has found its policy did not lead to abuse. Can we have an independent enquiry please? Because no-one outside the far rightwing believes that the Pentagon is an impartial investigator. How do Guantanamo interrogators crack an egg? They don't - it "fell down the stairs, Sarge".

Following the recent news that the Army has missed it's recruitment target comes some detail. America's black community, traditionally a rich recruiting ground for the armed forces, is shunning the army in record numbers.

The People's Republic of Seabrook looks at a survey of American infrastructure. America gets a D overall. Personally, when I arrived from the UK I was amazed that Texans put up with such crappy roads, undrinkable water, terribly maintained schools and a downright lethal rail system. All are far poorer than European nations of similiar wealth would have. I wonder why? Oh yes, that bugbear of both left and right over here - taxes.

William S. Lind is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation, the man who wrote the book on counter-insurgency warfare and an arch-conservative. Following the success of the fiction novel Metal Storm in Turkey, he thinks "America has managed to bring about what historians call a 'diplomatic revolution', a fundamental shift in alliances, by encouraging everyone else, ancient enemies included, to ally against herself."

Here we see in dramatic fashion America’s loss of the “Global War on Terrorism” at the moral level. By invading and occupying Iraq, a country that posed no threat to us, and threatening to do the same to other countries around the world, we have made America into a monster – even in Turkey, the country that has been our closest Islamic ally since the onset of the Cold War. So dramatically has America managed to reverse its post-9/11 moral ascendancy that not only can Turks imagine us attacking Turkey, they see Russia coming to their rescue! Russia has been Turkey’s number one enemy for centuries.

In the UK honest-to-goodness miracle worker,Gordon Brown is set to meet self-imposed fiscal rules and reinforce his reputation. Brown is the very model of a modern democratic socialist and successor to Tony Blair as Prime Minister after the next general election. He is unlikely to be as much to the current White House's taste as Blair has been.

Tony Blair, meanwhile, has been caught out after it emerged that he breached the official code of conduct for ministers by failing to show the Attorney General's full advice on the legality of the Iraq war to the Cabinet.

Look, Labour is going to win the election - but it will be Gordon's victory not Tony's. Pretty soon after, he will step aside under pressure from his own party to whom he is increasingly seen as a liability rather than an asset. Americans should be watching this as it will utterly change the transatlantic dynamic.

The Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, says future federal deficits pose the biggest risk to long-term economic stability. On this he is correct as Gordon Brown, who solved the deficit pit he inherited from conservatives touting an "ownership society", would readily agree. However, his endorsement of Bush's social security reforms misses the point, as they will just accelerate the rate at which the deficit grows through massive public borrowing. The trouble with the "ownership society" is that everyone owns a share of the debt while only the richest get any share of the spoils.

Footnote: Have you noticed that the right in the US tries to ignore Gordon Brown's existence? It must really make them sick that a socialist has been responsible for policies that have brought a combination of continual economic growth, low inflation and high employment by keeping to the self-imposed fiscal rules (that current spending should be met by taxes over the cycle and he should only borrow to invest) to which he has pinned his reputation. Meanwhile their own incumbents pursue policies that were proven miserable failures two decades ago in the UK and continually redefine the term "fiscal irresponsiblity". Isn't the world a funny place?